The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(68)

“Do you know what my theory is?” said Murray. Wells shrugged again. “The letter is so clumsily executed it looks like someone crudely attempting to disguise his own handwriting, perhaps so that he could later deny his selfless act.”

Murray concluded his theory with a wink that came close to rousing all the old resentment Wells had made such an effort to smother. And yet, knowing that this puzzling misunderstanding would one day be cleared up, he managed to contain himself and change the subject. Toward the end of the day, worn down by Murray’s indefatigable bonhomie, Wells even thought it might only be a matter of time before, as the apocryphal letter announced, he would end up considering him his friend.

A week later, at the engagement ceremony, Wells was one of those who applauded the most. Somehow, he had grown used to the couple’s mutual displays of affection and couldn’t help feeling happy when he saw them formalize their betrothal. Murray and Emma agreed to marry in London, the city invaded by Martians that had joined their lives forever, but the wedding date was postponed until Emma’s father, who had suffered the spectacular loss of all his hair, had recovered. Despite the couple’s eagerness to tie the knot, they decided to wait until the bride-to-be’s parents could cross the Atlantic, considering that they had already broken quite enough conventions.

Life went on regardless, and after the reprieve he had given Murray, Wells began to experience a kind of spiritual inertia, which to his surprise brought him a degree of serenity. Now that he had no great adversary who regularly upset him, who made him seethe whenever he thought about him, Wells felt oddly calm. If he stopped short of describing himself as happy it was because he had always been suspicious of such emphatic statements. As for his work, it had also begun to flow harmoniously, as though in accordance with his mood. Gone was his youthful zeal, the times when, in an attempt to find his own style, he would read his favorite authors with the methodical attention of a spy, as he dreamed of blazing a trail so original nothing hitherto published could be compared to it. And although critics had praised the imagination his novels exuded, the fact was that many of them hadn’t evolved from his own ideas: he owed The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The Wonderful Visit in part to Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man, with whom Wells had enjoyed a most inspiring meeting in 1888. But the novel with the strangest beginnings of all was undoubtedly The War of the Worlds, the work that had marked the start of his unexpected friendship with Murray. A stranger had passed the plot on to him when he was fifteen years old. At that time, Wells was apprenticed to the loathsome bakery in Southsea where his mother had sent him to learn a trade. Every afternoon after work he would saunter down to the jetty and stare into the black waters while he wondered forlornly whether drowning in them wouldn’t be his only escape from the depressing future that awaited him. It was on one of those melancholy evenings that a strange fellow of about fifty had walked up to him and started to talk to him as if he knew him better than anyone else in the world. Despite Wells’s initial mistrust, they had ended up holding a conversation, as brief as it was astonishing, during which the stranger had told him a terrifying tale about Martians conquering the Earth. After he had finished, he told Wells that the story was a gift: he could write it one day if he became an author, although if that happened, which the man seemed in no doubt about, Wells must promise to find a more suitable, hopeful ending. And his prediction had come true: that youth had gone on to become a writer and with five novels to his name had finally felt equal to the task the stranger had entrusted him with eighteen years before. In the end, he thought it had turned out rather well. As had occurred with The Time Machine, his readers, oblivious to the social message in his novel, had interpreted it as a simple fantastical tale, but Wells consoled himself by thinking that if the stranger on the jetty were still alive and had read the book, he might feel satisfied with the ending Wells had given it.

However, Wells paid less and less attention to the quest for surprising plots for his scientific novels, because in the past few years he had decided to change course: he would abandon the fantasy fiction that had brought him such success and instead use as his narrative material his own experiences and responses to life. For the moment, he had managed for better or worse to finish Love and Mr. Lewisham and almost without coming up for air had submerged himself in Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, a comic novel in the Dickensian style, with a host of amusing characters going about their ordinary lives. And the fact was Wells seemed to have discovered an inexhaustible mine within himself. Moving to Sandgate had undoubtedly proved a great success: he had more ideas in one day there than in a whole week in Worcester.

And so, five months later, when it became abundantly clear that the air in Sandgate agreed with him in more ways than one, the couple moved to Arnold House, a semidetached dwelling, less exposed to the elements, where the sea lurked at a safe distance at the far end of the garden. Murray and Emma were frequent visitors, and their neighbors, the Pophams, a couple of private means and sophisticated tastes, soon proved the perfect companions. They read a lot and so could discuss with them their latest reads and their favorite works, and they were also keen athletes. Together they helped teach Murray to swim, fixing a raft thirty yards from the shoreline so he could swim out to it.

Overnight, without anyone planning it, Arnold House became the center of a vibrant cultural universe, where meetings of leading members of the Fabian Society took place as did endless discussions about art and politics, but also about cookery, sport, or any subject worthy of serious or lighthearted debate. Many writers and thinkers lived nearby, and as everywhere was easily accessible by bicycle, a network of houses soon sprang up, like the one the Blands had at Dymchurch, through which a stream of writers, actors, painters, and others possessed by the Muses would pass, partaking in lengthy social gatherings, many of which led to heated debates about this and that, which occasionally ended in a game of badminton. After dark, those discussions would turn into impromptu parties that went on until two or three in the morning, and the next day a haggard group of guests would emerge with hangovers from their bedrooms to guzzle the usual hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs, punctually served up in the hosts’ dining room at noon.